Did anyone catch episode #3 of “Dancing With the Stars” last nite? The Very First Man was adorable, witty and cute - as expected. He’s just so darned LOVABLE! I guess that’s why his legion(s) of fans adore him - that’s my theory, anyway.
And these qualities serve him well, given whom he’s dancing with. And under the tutelage of.
It would be appear that Little Miss More-Man has a lact of tact to go along with her intact maidenhead. I saw her on “Entertainment Tonight” last week, and she blurted out this gem: “At first, I wondered why they had stuck me with him (Adam),” she said. “Shut the f–k up and go back to trumpeting your virginity over the rest of us swells,” I snarled.
I must say, though, her brother (Derek Hough) is F-I-N-E. If I were a couple of decades younger, I’d probably be bewitched, be-bothered and bewildered. ‘Cause he sure can dance!
And, when her arthritis ain’t actin’ up - The Songbird can dance with the best of ‘em, too!
Went to the dog / art show at City Art — was fun — I suspect some one has thought of it but how about an art category of “Dogs that Paint ? Or perhaps ask an amatuer dog owners draw / paint their pet —-
Anyone can send an entry to the dog show art show. We get 6-800 each year. Out of those we pick 200 to be judged. To be picked for judging is really a big deal.
The art show attracks entries from around the world. The winner is donated to the AKC Museum of the Dog in St Louis each year.
It’s really a very big deal and the Wichita Kennel Club works on this project all year long.
This editorial from Davis Merritt in this morning’s paper sums up my feelings perfectly. For those of you who don’t read the paper, I think this is a good one.
Clinton’s style isn’t what nation needs
Running a political campaign isn’t the same thing as governing, but both undertakings reveal their leaders’ personalities and values. By those measures alone, good reason exists to hope that Hillary Clinton closes her show very soon.
The more she struggles to destroy Barack Obama, the more she demonstrates that another Clinton administration would represent no change in the toxic political atmosphere that many Americans rightly resent and fear.
Obama put together a campaign calculated to change the tone of political discourse, drawing on his rich intellect and unique heritage to attract new voices and feet and money to his cause.
Clinton pulled out the old map, transmuted eight years of first ladyship into a presidential portfolio, and assumed she could not lose. When she did lose, 11 times in a row, she grew desperate.
That’s when the character of leadership began to evidence itself.
Republican candidate John McCain became, in her assertion, better suited than fellow Democrat Obama to lead the country.
Obama was a Christian only “as far as I know.”
The unacceptable ravings of his pastor must be held against him.
Soaring speeches became “just words.”
Then there was the strange memory blip about Bosnia. Most people can recall with great clarity where and when — and whether — they were shot at. For Clinton, saying at least three times that she was under sniper fire became, when clear contrary evidence arose, “Oh, I misspoke.”
And now she protests that the news media give Obama a pass but are hard on her, which is the hoariest landmark of all on the old map of political tactics. No first lady goes anywhere in public without media coverage, so the question arises why it took months for those allegedly antagonistic reporters to refute her claims about the “sniper” incident.
Through all of this, Obama has stuck to his themes, pausing only occasionally, and civilly, to respond to the Clinton campaign’s fulminations. They are not themes that will palpitate the hearts of conservatives, and whether he would be a better president than McCain cannot yet be fully calculated.
But it is increasingly clear that the more Clinton attacks Obama, the more she does the Republicans’ heavy lifting. Is she really willing to destroy the Democratic Party in order to save it from Obama?
If she and Obama had fundamental policy differences, her determination to soldier on could be better understood. But the two are in step on the broad issues the nation faces. Clinton obviously believes that she can accomplish their shared aims better than he.
Had she framed her campaign differently, she might have been in position to do so. But the problems the nation faces cannot be resolved by politics as usual; our divisions are too deep and the scars of runaway partisanship are too tender.
Moving out of the scorched earth of American politics will require a different sort of leadership, grounded in willingness to listen and compromise, intellectual honesty and the ability to inspire people to expect more.
Clinton’s campaign decisions and style, as precursor to her governing decisions and style, say that she cannot meet the nation’s deepest needs.
Are the policies on the Kansas.com site different than the blogs? I offered two comments this morning - one on the article Mary cited - and another on the pornography story. Neither of my comments were allowed in - yet some dickesse who blurted out the fact that he “liked ta-ta’s” got his post included.
What in the hellola gives with this noise?
I believe I express myself with more dignity than a lot of folk, yet I was heavily censored this morning.
And what do you think about President Ronald Reagan’s appointee, Lee Thomas?
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/31/america/Gore-Environment.php
” “This is not only an environmental issue. It’s an issue of energy independence and it’s an issue of national security,” said Lee Thomas, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan. “We need to all come together on this and the time to move on it is now, not later.” “
“But it is increasingly clear that the more Clinton attacks Obama, the more she does the Republicans’ heavy lifting. Is she really willing to destroy the Democratic Party in order to save it from Obama?”
Senator Clinton has not attacked Obama.
It just happens that the media love affair for Obama has caused many damaging things about him to be very late coming to light. And what is the party worth as it becomes increasingly the Republican party, Democratic unit?
Hilary’s plan for offering government subsidized training for those who are layed off their jobs is just another example of how she wants to treat the symptoms, and not really address the underlying causes to why people are losing their jobs in the first place. It’s a bandaid solution to a growing crisis.
Obama’s ideas are targeted more to the issues causing the problems in the first place. We have to attack the problems at the core if we’re going to pull out of this economic mess the country’s in. We’re heading toward recession and I haven’t heard one common sense solution from her to turn things around.
Experience isn’t as important as the right thinking. Obama has the right vision…Hilary is just more of the same as we’ve had for the last 20 yrs.
It’s going to take a lot more than politics as usual to get out of this disaster Bush has put our country into.
For those of you that were too busy to click my link the other day:
The Disgrace of Liberalism
By J.R. Dunn
2008 marks the end of liberalism as a governing force in the same way that 1968 marked the end of liberalism as a political doctrine.
American liberals spent the ’60s seeing their programs and policies collapse one after the other. The War on Crime, the War on Poverty, civil rights legislation, Vietnam, all were either unmitigated disasters or textbook examples of the law of unintended consequences. The Democrats went into the 1968 presidential election as crippled as any political party in American history, choked with failure, bereft of ideas, and facing a general uprising from their own younger elements.
The Democrats’ 1968 Chicago convention marked the end of FDR-style liberalism. Media coverage revealed American liberals as incapable of controlling their own constituency, much less directing a country. As delegates cowered within the convention center, Movement rioters ran wild throughout the downtown area, fighting knock-down, drag-out battles with the police. Not a single liberal figure made any serious attempt to confront, control, or even communicate with the rioters. Little more than a decade after declaring itself the “American civic creed”, liberalism was on the ropes.
Instead of joining the Whigs and Know-Nothings in historical oblivion, liberalism surrendered to its internal rebels, the Democratic Party’s left wing, indistinguishable in beliefs and intent from any hardcore socialist party on the international scene. In 1972, they ran one of their own, George McGovern who in 1948 had served as delegate for communist front-man Henry Wallace) for the presidency.
McGovern’s defeat at the hands of Richard M. Nixon represented no real setback for the new ideology. American leftists commenced their “Long march through the institutions” using techniques developed by Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci to take over the media, academia, and much of the bureaucracy. Political liberalism, due in large part to its control over massive urban machines, many of then going back to the days of Tammany, continued as a kind of husk animated by the new leftist persona. But liberalism in the traditional sense existed only in the minds of the naive, the ill-informed, and terminally nostalgic.
Followers of the mutant ideology were in no way open with their agenda. Instead they operated under the cover of two pretenses — superior governance and high morality. Liberals presented themselves as technocrats with a clearer understanding of policy and governance than the opposition. Pragmatism was their creed, results their only criteria. Utilizing the old gimmicks of constituent services and favors and the new ones of planning and centralization, liberalism was able to maintain its dominance in backward and desperate areas of the country such as the Northeast and Upper Midwest.
The claim to higher morality was more inchoate, a kind of luminous abstraction beyond the grasp of money-grubbing Republicans, clearly understandable only by liberals themselves. Liberals claimed a monopoly on compassion, decency, and social justice (as defined by themselves), posing as the sole defenders of civic virtue against a horde of backwoodsmen, racists, and religious fanatics.
This elaborate double imposture served to keep liberalism alive for over three decades in the absence of ideas, doctrine, and serious accomplishments. But 2008 has brought the charade to an end. Events this year have exposed, once and for all, in a way that cannot be denied, elided, or spun, Democratic liberals as the party of abject incompetence and institutionalized corruption.
Eliot Spitzer worked his way to the governorship of New York State as the living embodiment of liberal higher morality, crusading against a series of dubious financial and corporate villains. His downfall as the result of a prostitution scheme too moronic for fiction might be taken as evidence of personal failings and no more were it not for the fact that his replacement, David A. Paterson, confessed to similar activities as the first official act of his administration. (If not even more egregious — no one, after all, has accused Spitzer of trading jobs for sexual favors).
We need only add James McGreevey, ousted in 2004 from New Jersey’s governorship for homosexual escapades with an aide (apppointed to a homeland security job with the state for which he had no qualifications), to conclude that liberalism has subsided to a level of corruption of European dimensions.
It’s often overlooked — thanks in large part to the Clinton “legacy” — that such misbehavior is almost always accompanied by corruption in other spheres. Insistence by Clinton’s defenders that his various lady troubles were “personal matters” succeeded in obscuring the moral connection between Big Bill’s follies and the endless bribes, kickbacks, suicides, illegal mass firings, and vanishing files that made the “most ethical administration in history” so entertaining to watch.
So it needs restating as a simple truth that a man who cannot control his sexual impulses is unlikely to succeed in more complex matters. In little over a year, Spitzer threw away the goodwill engendered by his landslide victory through a series of petty conspiracies and dirty tricks, bringing New York state government to a standstill in the process. While McGreevey was a better governor than he’s ever likely to get credit for (he solved the longstanding auto-insurance “crisis” that made New Jersey a laughingstock for half a dozen previous administrations), his penchant for putting his muscle boys on the state payroll undercuts any other claims for his record. The same can be said for Paterson. Though, being both blind and black, he may likely survive, revelations concerning his practice of awarding jobs and positions don’t bode well for the future.
These men are clearly representative of the post-Clinton Democratic Party. They set out to follow in Bill’s footsteps, have ended up much the same as he did, and have dragged their party and political doctrine along with them. (At this point somebody will bring up the names Foley and Craig. But neither stood anywhere near the center of American conservatism in the way that the Northeastern governors do with liberalism as a matter of course. Foley and Craig were rotten apples. With the Democrats, it’s the whole barrel.)
In turning to the presidential campaign, we need do no more than mention Madame Hillary. The Ma Barker of Little Rock is in a class by herself when it comes to political iniquity (not to mention dodging snipers). The chief puzzle concerning Hillary is how, being so blatantly what she is, she succeeds in holding onto any support whatsoever. There’s a process in quantum mechanics called “renormalization”, in which certain quantities with values of infinity are arbitrarily dropped back to a more manageable “zero” for the sake of solving the equation. This encapsulates Hillary’s political career: truly mindboggling levels of corruption and ineptitude have been continually renormalized by fellow politicians and the media to enable her to survive. These people made a particular type of bargain when they bent the rules for Hillary. Now the ground is opening up under their feet. It has been a pleasure to watch.
(The question I have about Hillary that’s least likely to be answered is this: what did she do to Daniel P. Moynihan? Recall the staged ceremony in which Moynihan handed the mantle of senator over to Hillary. Here was one of the greatest minds of recent American politics, possibly liberalism’s last political intellectual, a tower of strength, who for years answered the mad dogs of the UN General Assembly in the only tones they understood, standing beside Hillary, staring at the ground before him, face a mask of shame and self-disgust, and answering in monosyllables. What possible explanation can there be for this?)
Barack Obama was supposed to be another matter. Obama has ascended on a cloud of pure moral superiority and nothing else. That has now evaporated, thanks to impolitic comments from his wife and the news that he has for two decades belonged to what amounts to a racist cult. Obama has nothing else to offer in the way of experience or achievements. Beyond his current difficulties, there lie his continuing and as yet unexplained entanglement with Tony Rezko (He barely knew the man, he insists. All he did was show Rezko his new house before closing. I always clear major purchases with people I scarcely know, don’t you?), along with pending revelations concerning his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former terrorist who began his career as one of the driving forces of the Weather Underground.
Obama’s response, his “Kennedyesque” speech on race, was in fact purely Clintonian in that it attempted to transform his failings into virtues while placing the blame on the country as a whole. (Not to mention his innocent typical white grandmother.) In less than two weeks, Obama has succeeded in lowering himself to the same level as Madame Hillary. Quite an achievement.
(As for Obama’s claims to be a necessary “racial reconciliator”, this reconciliation has in fact been going on since the end of segregation, quite successfully too. As is often the case with liberals, Obama is offering a solution to a problem that is solving itself.)
To this gallery we can add Jennifer Granholm, who assured that Michigan’s current slide was as drastic and damaging as possible, Ed Rendell, Hillary’s consigliere for Pennsylvania, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Kwame Kilpatrick, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and malfeasance in office. That’s the Democratic Party, the bastion of American liberalism, as it stands. A party whose entire leadership cadre, including presidential candidates, state governors, and Congressional leaders, are corrupt or incompetent or both, a party more suitable to ruling a Balkan or Central African peapatch than the world’s reigning superpower.
2008 is being promoted as the year of the Democrats. Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to see this as anything but media hype. Weak as the Republicans may be, they do boast such figures as Schwarzenegger, Jindal, Crist, and Coburn among many others, not to mention a presidential candidate who, whatever his drawbacks, is a different order of being than the opposition.
But there have been danger signs. In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of “conservative” politicians who have adapted the liberal style, masking their own flaws with acceptable rhetoric. The latest of these is Mike Huckabee, who presented himself as a conservative messiah while governing Arkansas like… well, like a typical governor of Arkansas. Liberalism has demonstrated that these tactics lead nowhere. We must be careful not to succumb.
Liberalism will stagger on. It still has control of all those urban political machines, along with the unions and bureaucracies. But it has no future. Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far. We may yet live to see this albatross removed from the nation’s back.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.
We need to have more protective oversight from the lending business to the corporate outsourcing to protect American consumers and workers. The current mortgage crisis is just one example of how non regulation puts us at risk for predatory, fraudulant lending practices. Outsourcing jobs has been devastating to our economy…and there has been no effort by the current administration to discourage it. Things have to change…and from what I’ve read and heard so far, Hilary isn’t going to much about it either.
America is about diverse beliefs, opintions, and different ways of thinking. I don’t agree with Hank a lot of the time..and I consider him a friend and a neighbor. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where we all thought the same way..that would be too boring. Being challenged is a good way to explore your own belief system. It makes you think…and that’s never a bad thing.
For anyone that listens to Neil Bortz, he has some really good commentary on the Housing issue.
He used to be an attorney for closing mortgage deals.
You talk about predatory lending, what about predatory people on the lenders?
As usual though… the ATTITUDE that we need big daddy government to protect us from those evil companies prevails…
Nevermind that just a decade ago the lending companies were being racist for not lending money out. Now they are being predatory for lending money out.
“Liberalism will stagger on. It still has control of all those urban political machines, along with the unions and bureaucracies. But it has no future. Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far. We may yet live to see this albatross removed from the nation’s back.”
Hope not Hank, if that happens, we won’t be America anymore. Think about it.
““I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
Barack Obama
I guess those ideas have been pretty good to you huh Mary? Maybe why you want more of them?
I don’t see the democrats as good and the republicans as bad…there is good and evil, mediocracy and inspiration, in each party. I think for myself, and I don’t discourage anyone from doing the same. That’s what makes Americans who we are.
“You just said that I complimented the Republican ideas. That is not true,” Obama said to Hillary Clinton at Monday’s debate.
“What I said, and I will provide you with a quote, what I said was — is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to…”
I guess the ‘Smartest Woman in the World’ has always been a consumate liar!
March 31, 2008
Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior
As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.
The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.
Why?
“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.
Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.
The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.
“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.
The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?
“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.
The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.
Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.
But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.
the ATTITUDE that we need big daddy government to protect us from those evil companies prevails…
I agree! Everyone associated with Bear Sterns should give up everything they own and live on 12K a year until their their debt is paid off. After all, they made the wrong decisions in their lives so should be held accountable, right?
High School Graduation Rates Plummet Below 50 Percent in Some U.S. Cities
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
WASHINGTON — Seventeen of the nation’s 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.
In the above I think she transgresses the title of ‘liar’. She’s a crook and a fraud. If her brief had been placed before a federal judge she could have been disbarred.
§ 448.101(4), Fla. Stat. (1997). We agree with WTVT that
the FCC’s policy against the intentional falsification of the news – which the FCC has
called its “news distortion policy” – does not qualify as the required “law, rule, or
regulation” under section 448.102.
The FCC has never published its news distortion policy as a regulation
with definitive elements and defenses
there’s your fox news for ya, Max. And you wonder why no one believes it? Just because it’s on fox news doesn’t mean there’re any facts. Court of appeals ruled it’s just a suggestion.
Hank Price
Posted April 1, 2008 at 10:25 am | Permalink
Well Max,
In the above I think she transgresses the title of ‘liar’. She’s a crook and a fraud. If her brief had been placed before a federal judge she could have been disbarred.
=================================================
Doesn’t matter Hank. She’s a Democrat. Democrats will blindly vote for Democrats. In fact, they love politicians who cheat, lie, steal, break rules & laws, whatever it takes to get their Fair Share of Money out of the Federal Government.
Quid Pro Quo
Vote for us Democrats, and You Get Your Welfare Increased!
You want Free Stuff? Vote Democrat.
50% of the taxpayers pay 97% of the income tax. No reason to cater to those who pay taxes, when you can promise the moon to those who don’t pay taxes - at the expense of the other half of America.
Hey, Regular: My posts were eventually included! I guess that server senility just hung ‘em up.
Hey, Ghoti: I may be going home to Hays to visit me folks and me adorable little steppuppy some time soon!
Do I need a Haz-Mat suit? Or a self-administered lobotomy? Or should I emulate Adam’s More-Man twit of a dance partner and trumpet my secondary virginity to the townsfolk who were so ready to have me burned at the stake 33 years ago?
Okay - I’m only kidding. I’ve changed. I’ve grown. I’ve manured, er, matured. The manure (my ex) moved away nearly 29 years ago. So the air should be non-fetid to take in………
Seems a well juried art show — I think the dog as painters art put (paw prints, mug shots on copiers could draw moe attention to the show — I’m sure the association has a sense of humor — I’ll write them.
I know Mary has gone to work, but I want to thank her for reposting the editorial. I’ve been thinking about the same things Davis Merritt wrote about, and he pretty much covered it.
Hillary has gone the way of the Republicans, unable to stick to the issues and instead going for the b.s. Reminds me of Tanya Harding, going for the knees and reeks of fear. It’s totally uncalled for from a person as intelligent as Mrs. Clinton. (Sorry, JR, but for me, she’s showing her Republican roots.)
This ridiculous infighting Hillary is leading does nothing but give McCain a pass. It’s causing the Democrats to lose ground, as McCain bounces back and forth between the center right and the center. Is she paying attention, or is she so focused on beating Obama, no matter how down and dirty she has to get?
Do I agree she should step down? No. But she needs to go back to the issues. If she can’t win on those, she shouldn’t win.
Is she paying attention, or is she so focused on beating Obama, no matter how down and dirty she has to get?
=================================================
“The Liberal
Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.” “Like spoiled, angry
children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and
demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.”
Well, one thing I see about the graduation rate story posted earlier is that, irrespective of any other factor, there are large African-American populations within those urban districts. This is a part of the problem, it seems to me; getting those folks, their families, et al, to buy into the importance of an education. Not happening there, it appears; and from my observations as an “outsider”, not happening here in 259, either.
Throwing more money at the problem won’t cure it, that’s for sure; taking money away will likely make it worse, IMHO. I don’t pretend to have an answer, either, but I’m not too sure firing teachers and administrators and replacing them with others would have any salubrious effect on the problem, the cause of which lies without the schools themselves, again IMO.
And by the way, there are precious few “facts” in J.R. Dunn’s screed. Just a lot of interpretation and spin that presume motivations (not to mention selective scandal picking).
An 80-year-old church deacon was removed from the Smith Haven Mall yesterday in a wheelchair and arrested by police for refusing to remove a T-shirt protesting the Iraq War.
Police said that Don Zirkel, of Bethpage, was disturbing shoppers at the Lake Grove mall with his T-shirt, which had what they described as “graphic anti-war images.” Zirkel, a deacon at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Wyandanch, said his shirt had the death tolls of American military personnel and Iraqis - 4,000 and 1 million - and the words “Dead” and “Enough.” The shirt also has three blotches resembling blood splatters.
Police said in a release last night that Zirkel was handing out anti-war pamphlets to mallgoers and that mall security told him to stop and turn his shirt inside out. Zirkel refused to turn his shirt inside out and wouldn’t leave, police said. Security placed him on “civilian arrest” and called police. When police arrived, Zirkel passively resisted attempts to bring him to a police car, the release said.
But Zirkel said he was sitting in the food court drinking coffee with his wife Marie, 77, and several others when police and mall security officers approached and demanded they remove their anti-war T-shirts.
The others complied, but Zirkel said he refused, and when he wouldn’t stand up to be removed and arrested, authorities brought over a wheelchair. “They forcibly picked me up and put me in the wheelchair,” said Zirkel, a deacon at one of the poorest Catholic parishes on Long Island, where a devastating fire recently destroyed the rectory and storage areas.
NEW YORK — Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Steve Simon voiced opposition for tax increases on the oil and gas industry and said profits are needed to develop more energy resources. “We depend on high earnings over the up cycle to sustain investment over the long term, including the down cycles,” Simon said in his prepared remarks to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “Our world wide profits have grown, but taxes have grown even more,” he said. He said Exxon Mobil’s tax rate is about 44%, compared to 30% for other large U.S. corporations. Channeling $18 billion in tax breaks to oil companies over to renewable energy will discourage investment in fossil fuels, he said.
____________________________________________
This is a bad thing why?
Posting the largest profits in History and getting a tax break… hmmmm…..
Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds
By Jose Fermoso 03.28.08 | 5:30 PM
The Newton Virus rearranges the desktop icons on a Mac, and makes a great April Fools’ joke. (See Item 3 below)
Courtesy troika.uk
Here are the top 10 tech-related April Fools’ jokes to play on friends and co-workers. The best geek pranks make a gadget or a co-worker’s computer appear “broken.” Watch with glee as the unsuspecting victim goes mental trying to figure it out.
The list was compiled mostly from reader submissions to last year’s April Fools’ widget.
Remember, jokes are supposed to be funny, so don’t really break anything.
1. Re-map the Keyboard of Your Excitable Co-worker Every company has a sales rep who uses exclamation marks excessively (”C’mon guys!! We can do better this quarter!!!”). Use a program like KeyExtender, a registry hack that re-maps their keyboard so that exclamations and question marks are switched. They may begin to question their sunny outlook in life: “C’mon guys?? We can do better this quarter??? Guys??”
As they paw helplessly at their keyboards, sidle up and ‘fix’ their problem. Don’t forget to smile.
2. The Speech-to-Text Platform Joke You’ll need a wireless keyboard for this. Set up a meeting with a colleague to teach them a speech-recognition program (you’ll need a plausible reason why the company needs this). Then, right before the meeting, connect your keyboard wirelessly to the victim’s computer. Explain to the victim that the program will have to be trained to recognize their voice, and give them a sample sentence to try out. As they do this, have a co-worker a few desks away type gibberish into the program page (”Boomshakalaka!).
The poor guy will make a fool of himself talking louder and changing his pronunciation to try and make it work.
3. Desktop Havoc on the Mac A London design firm called Troika has produced video of an amazing computer “virus,” which may or may not be publicly available. It’s probably just a clever art project, but it’s too good not to mention here. Nonetheless, Troika’s Newton Virus is a Mac bug that rearranges the desktop icons using the accelerometers built into recent MacBooks. When the unsuspecting user picks up their laptop, all the icons and menu items fall to the ground as though under the influence of gravity. Watch it here:
This prank is perfect for control freaks who can’t stand to see even one icon moved on their desktop. They must be stopped!
4. Optical Mouse Confusion This is an update of the old mouse-ball-removal trick: A small piece of tape over the laser sensor on an optical mouse will cause it to go haywire. Just color the nonstick side of the tape with a Sharpie and then tape it over the lens.
A Wired.com reader last year reported that someone at a major tech company (it rhymes with ‘Frisco’) was fooled by this trick four times in a single day. Sometimes the simplest pranks are the most enjoyable.
5. Change the Language Settings on Google When a co-worker leaves her computer unattended for a minute, quickly go to Google’s home page and click on “Preferences.” There, you can choose the interface language of the search engine. Klingon, Hacker and Yiddish are all excellent choices, but Elmer Fudd is our personal favorite. As Elmer, you can use the Google Diwectowy, perform a Google Seawch or find out if you’re ‘feewing wucky.’
You’ll be amazed how few people realize you can do this. The change-the-language trick also works well on cellphones.
6. The BlueScreen of Death Screensaver The BlueScreen of Death error in Windows has driven lots of users to the fringe of computer homicide. Tap into the river of pain by installing the BlueScreen of Death Screensaver on a friend’s machine. It’s available at Microsoft’s IT website Technet, but there are several others out there. Just make sure it doesn’t have a real virus.
The Blue Screen of Death
What’s likely to happen? The victim will reboot his machine by hitting the restart button. Hopefully, they didn’t save their work!
7. Splitting Monitor Cables This is one even software geeks won’t easily figure out. Open up their monitor cable (don’t worry, it’s safe) and wire the RGB lines to different colors — this will totally warp the image on the screen. Everyone will assume it’s a software problem. You’re so clever. You can thank us later.
8. The Old Screenshot-as-Desktop-Wallpaper Gag This classic is as good as gold. Take a screenshot of your friend’s desktop and make it their desktop wallpaper. You’ll have to minimize applications, hide all of the desktop icons, and set the Windows task bar to auto hide. Pull up a comfortable chair and pretend to feel their pain while they click like mad and rail at the gods.
9. Change Autocorrect in MS Office People are too reliant on some common programs that help them cheat, such as the Autocorrect feature in MS Office. Capitalize on their laziness by adding a few of your favorite “alternative” spellings.
Common words like “about” or “together” work well. Even better, try subtly adjusting the spelling of your victim’s name. It’s so hard-wired into most people’s fingers, they hardly look at it. Right, Mr. Dumass?
10. Remotely Monitor a Friend’s Webcam Spy on your best buddy at work through his webcam (think American Pie), record the feed, then show a compilation of his brow-furrowing and nose-picking at the next staff meeting. This is why they like you.
You can do this through remote-monitoring programs, such as WebCam Monitor on Windows; and even do it through an iPhone using Telekinesis, an iPhone app that allows you to take pictures on a Mac laptop using its built-in iSight camera.
AMY GOODMAN: Obama was speaking at the Cooper Union. I had a chance to briefly interview him as he was shaking people’s hands after he left the stage. I asked Obama why he’s not calling for a total withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in accordance with the 70 percent of Iraqis who say they want the US out.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Obama, quick question: 70 percent of Iraqis say they want the US to withdraw completely; why don’t you call for a total withdrawal?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I do, except for our embassy. I call for amnesty and protecting our civilian contractors there.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said a residual force—
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Yeah, but—
AMY GOODMAN: —which means [inaudible] thousands [inaudible].
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, no. I mean, I don’t think that you’ve read exactly what I’ve said. What I said is that we do need to have a strike force in the region. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Iraq; it could be in Kuwait or other places. But we do have to have some presence in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you call for a ban on the private military contractors like Blackwater?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I’ve actually—I’m the one who sponsored the bill that called for the investigation of Blackwater in [inaudible], so—
AMY GOODMAN: But would you support the Sanders one now?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Here’s the problem: we have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can’t draw down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops. So what I want to do is draw—I want them out in the same way that we make sure that we draw out our own combat troops. Alright? I mean, I—
AMY GOODMAN: Not a ban?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don’t want to replace those contractors with more US troops, because we don’t have them, alright? But this was a speech about the economy.
AMY GOODMAN: The war is costing $3 trillion, according to Stiglitz.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: That’s what—I know, which I made a speech about last week. Thank you.
This is what I think should be happening now in our primary, and I’m glad to see that it is. Both Obama and Clinton need to focus their attacks on McCain while they let the voters figure out which they want. If it keeps up like this, it will be very good for the Democratic Party.
‘Police said that Don Zirkel, of Bethpage, was disturbing shoppers at the Lake Grove mall with his T-shirt, which had what they described as “graphic anti-war images.”’
=============================
I think the man’s name was Zirkel… NOT Dirkel… :roll:
Vaughn Tolle
Posted April 1, 2008 at 11:47 am | Permalink
This is a part of the problem, it seems to me; getting those folks, their families, et al, to buy into the importance of an education.
===================================================
And just why do people NOT buy into the importance of an education? Because they don’t need one to survive in America today.
George Carlin, “The Planet Is Fine”
And I quote without any kind of express permission
We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What?
And, unfortunately Max, there is the appeal of “more money” from “the league” (forgetting that for every LeBron James, there are 1000 Korleone Youngs), illicit activities such as dealing in street drugs, etc., etc., that intervenes even when a parent or the parents push for completion of at least high school. Then there is the problem of perceived bias due to racial makeup (note the use of “perceived”) in the job market, the feeling that they won’t get ahead even if high school is completed, ignoring the fact that many, regardless of race or ethnicity, don’t get very far ahead with only a high school diploma any more, and on and on.
There is some problem here, Max, and it isn’t solely linked to the limited ability to survive in America today without an education. As I said, I’ve not the answer, or else I’d written a book, and be sitting back collecting the royalties; but to the extent the problem is “cultural” (using the term loosely), it seems to me that it is without the ability of the schools by themselves to correct it.
No chas, I think you did. Read upthread. Where exactly did he explain them? He said what he said. Why does he have to explain it. It was straight forward.
Hmm, reading the case that Fish linked, it seems the case turned on a point of law, namely the ‘news distortion policy’ of the FCC not being a “law or adopted regulation”, as I recall the court’s discussion. Thus, the Florida Court of Appeals found that the plaintiff’s claim failed under what I refer to a rule 12(b)(6) test; the decision goes to neither the truth or falsity of the allegation, this was not discussed in the decision. From the court’s disposition of the case, it would not matter if, in fact, the management of the Fox subsidiary was promoting “falsehoods” in the news; rather, the case turned, as stated above, on the FCC policy on “news distortion” not being an adopted regulation, as required under the statute in question.
Just think Sol, your children can marry a Hupanzee (chimpanzee/human) or a Lluman (Llama/human.)
Of course, there might be a conflict at the Thanksgiving dinner table when a relative Heagle (part human/eagle) is offended by the main course and the Hovine (part sheep/human) demands more greens on the table. :)
Hank, the Fox affiliate didn’t prevail on the basis of being on the side of accurate reporting. The Fox affiliate prevailed due to the holding that the FCC “news distortion policy” was not a statute or adopted regulation. The truth or falsity of the reporter’s story or the editorial decisions made by the affiliate management had nothing to do with the Court’s decision.
Fish, while you may feel that the jury award was overturned because “that fox station had no onus to report facts”, I note that the award that was reversed was on the one count of violation of the Florida private whistle blower statute that the jury determined had been violated. Just as I find no support for Hank’s reading of the case from the decision, I find no support for your position in the decision, either.
A FCC policy not enforced is ho hum and a so what in this case. The outlaw reporters got axed.
The reporters were acting as activists and not reporters.
When they tried to file under the Florida’s Whistleblower’s act they got slammed to the mat, because the FCC never codified the very muddy regulation concerning ‘distortion policy.’
I mean, what person in their right mind would want to codify a regulation like that?
Talk about a straight arrow to the heart of the first amendment, that regulation would be shot down so fast it would set a record for speedy trials.
I’m Ben Stein – many of you know me from the classic film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” or from my Comedy Central show “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. Still others of you may know me as a speechwriter, for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. You may even have read my books, attended one of my lectures at The American University, Washington DC, or seen me on the talk shows.
I’m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world’s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.
America is not America without freedom. In every turning point in our history, freedom has been the key goal we are seeking: the Mayflower coming here, the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War. Tens of millions came here from foreign oppression and made a life here. Why? For freedom. Human beings are supposed to live in a state of freedom. Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given.
A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.
Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no brain surgery, no Internet, no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways, no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.
This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.
Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.
Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.
Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.
In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed comes to theaters near you in February 2008. To learn more, check out my blog here often … and explore the rest of our site for new developments, or to volunteer to help spread the word.
Sincerely,
Ben Stein
——————
This documentary is going to do a lot to expose the irrational arrogance and fear in the Darwinist community. Such that they will stoop to ruining careers in order to keep it a true believers only club. Even on the site blog Stein is being shouted down.
Regular, I don’t see it as simply as you regarding the “news distortion policy”. While we’re in agreement that the policy not enforced is a ho-hum situation, there is, it seems to me, a basis for such a policy to be placed in a regulation; not in its current form, to be sure, as it is “muddy”, to put it kindly.
As you know, outright defamation is an exception to the First Amendment. Yes, the New York Times v. Sullivan case and its progeny have instituted some tests that are hard to meet in this area, but if a knowingly false statement is deliberately publicized, even if a public figure is involved, as I read the current state of defamation law, the case may proceed. Thus, if a regulation of the FCC incorporates such a test as a “news distortion policy”, I believe it could survive scrutiny.
That being said, the jury was convinced that something wasn’t quite right, wasn’t it? :-)
Reagan right? A good hearted simp that the cons reprogrammed.
I see the very same potential in Barack Obama.
And as to hecklers post. It has always struck me that Republicans are the three year old children who never grew up. They are perpetually stuck in the “mine!” phase of development.
Reagan right? A good hearted simp that the cons reprogrammed.
I see the very same potential in Barack Obama.”
Uh huh… Obama, with a magna cum laude law degree from Harvard, and who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, is just a “simp”, like Reagan.
Ahhhh yes… definitions for one dont fit those of another… Quite typical, I think… I believe the point is, it is irrelevant whether either Michael Moore, OR YOU, James are obese…
If the obesity claim that you make has anything close to factual grounding, then perhaps your middle age spread, is another man’s obesity!! ROFL!! :roll:
Not me Chas, I’ve read the reviews and the analysis which point out the dozens of false claims Moore makes in his movie.
Like the opportunity that Moore didn’t take to interview 50 Cubans who had proof that they were denied any health care in Castro’s clinic, because they weren’t loyal Communists.
But wait — maybe James is outlander, and merely forgot to change nics before responding!! ROFL They do both type a lot alike, and when one is around, the other is always around too!! ROFL!!! Toooo funny!!!
But James, I answered your question WITH a question… Because Moore’s and YOUR obesity - or lack thereof - are irrelevant to whether another poster has SEEN the Michael Moore’s movies!!
Soooooooo as I said, OUTLANDER…. before James hogs the entire thread, have YOU seen any of Michael Moore’s movies??
“Clark just can’t leave personal stuff out of the blog.”
You mean like calling someone a “Heebie” or accusing them of being gay (for supporting gay rights) or making inappropriate comments about someone’s granddaughter?
232 Comments
This weekend is the big dog show. Some specialties on Thursday night and regular show on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
I have the judging schedule so if you want to know when ‘your’ breed is being shown, let me know.
Conformation, herding, lure coursing, agility and obedience. A lot of venders if you’re looking for something special for Foo Foo.
Did anyone catch episode #3 of “Dancing With the Stars” last nite? The Very First Man was adorable, witty and cute - as expected. He’s just so darned LOVABLE! I guess that’s why his legion(s) of fans adore him - that’s my theory, anyway.
And these qualities serve him well, given whom he’s dancing with. And under the tutelage of.
It would be appear that Little Miss More-Man has a lact of tact to go along with her intact maidenhead. I saw her on “Entertainment Tonight” last week, and she blurted out this gem: “At first, I wondered why they had stuck me with him (Adam),” she said. “Shut the f–k up and go back to trumpeting your virginity over the rest of us swells,” I snarled.
I must say, though, her brother (Derek Hough) is F-I-N-E. If I were a couple of decades younger, I’d probably be bewitched, be-bothered and bewildered. ‘Cause he sure can dance!
And, when her arthritis ain’t actin’ up - The Songbird can dance with the best of ‘em, too!
Hank
Went to the dog / art show at City Art — was fun — I suspect some one has thought of it but how about an art category of “Dogs that Paint ? Or perhaps ask an amatuer dog owners draw / paint their pet —-
heh heh
(smirks)
(chortles)
Hey Ken,
Anyone can send an entry to the dog show art show. We get 6-800 each year. Out of those we pick 200 to be judged. To be picked for judging is really a big deal.
The art show attracks entries from around the world. The winner is donated to the AKC Museum of the Dog in St Louis each year.
It’s really a very big deal and the Wichita Kennel Club works on this project all year long.
The winner is donated to the AKC Museum of the Dog in St Louis each year.
Whoa!
Had to re-read that, had visions in my mind that the winner of the dog show (not the art) was donated to the AKC Museum!
Thought about old Tricksy the basset hound being stuffed and mounted and sent in the cargo hold of some Air Express service to St. Louis.
I re-read it and everything is okay, but still…
This editorial from Davis Merritt in this morning’s paper sums up my feelings perfectly. For those of you who don’t read the paper, I think this is a good one.
Clinton’s style isn’t what nation needs
Running a political campaign isn’t the same thing as governing, but both undertakings reveal their leaders’ personalities and values. By those measures alone, good reason exists to hope that Hillary Clinton closes her show very soon.
The more she struggles to destroy Barack Obama, the more she demonstrates that another Clinton administration would represent no change in the toxic political atmosphere that many Americans rightly resent and fear.
Obama put together a campaign calculated to change the tone of political discourse, drawing on his rich intellect and unique heritage to attract new voices and feet and money to his cause.
Clinton pulled out the old map, transmuted eight years of first ladyship into a presidential portfolio, and assumed she could not lose. When she did lose, 11 times in a row, she grew desperate.
That’s when the character of leadership began to evidence itself.
Republican candidate John McCain became, in her assertion, better suited than fellow Democrat Obama to lead the country.
Obama was a Christian only “as far as I know.”
The unacceptable ravings of his pastor must be held against him.
Soaring speeches became “just words.”
Then there was the strange memory blip about Bosnia. Most people can recall with great clarity where and when — and whether — they were shot at. For Clinton, saying at least three times that she was under sniper fire became, when clear contrary evidence arose, “Oh, I misspoke.”
And now she protests that the news media give Obama a pass but are hard on her, which is the hoariest landmark of all on the old map of political tactics. No first lady goes anywhere in public without media coverage, so the question arises why it took months for those allegedly antagonistic reporters to refute her claims about the “sniper” incident.
Through all of this, Obama has stuck to his themes, pausing only occasionally, and civilly, to respond to the Clinton campaign’s fulminations. They are not themes that will palpitate the hearts of conservatives, and whether he would be a better president than McCain cannot yet be fully calculated.
But it is increasingly clear that the more Clinton attacks Obama, the more she does the Republicans’ heavy lifting. Is she really willing to destroy the Democratic Party in order to save it from Obama?
If she and Obama had fundamental policy differences, her determination to soldier on could be better understood. But the two are in step on the broad issues the nation faces. Clinton obviously believes that she can accomplish their shared aims better than he.
Had she framed her campaign differently, she might have been in position to do so. But the problems the nation faces cannot be resolved by politics as usual; our divisions are too deep and the scars of runaway partisanship are too tender.
Moving out of the scorched earth of American politics will require a different sort of leadership, grounded in willingness to listen and compromise, intellectual honesty and the ability to inspire people to expect more.
Clinton’s campaign decisions and style, as precursor to her governing decisions and style, say that she cannot meet the nation’s deepest needs.
It should be painfully clear to America that if you want to get rid of the favortism shown by the Obstructionist Senators, you’ll have to vote the Republicans out!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080401/ap_on_go_co/congress_oil_4
M-kay…….
Are the policies on the Kansas.com site different than the blogs? I offered two comments this morning - one on the article Mary cited - and another on the pornography story. Neither of my comments were allowed in - yet some dickesse who blurted out the fact that he “liked ta-ta’s” got his post included.
What in the hellola gives with this noise?
I believe I express myself with more dignity than a lot of folk, yet I was heavily censored this morning.
And it’s got my “ta-ta’s” in a tither……
“Moving out of the scorched earth of American politics will require a different sort of leadership, grounded in willingness to listen and compromise,”
Translation:
THANK YOU Republicans for raping the country! Can we have some more?
I would suspect Songbird, that your stories was swallowed by the $1.99 server that the Eagle uses for the blog.
Especially since the server was down for about 30 minutes somewhere between 9 and 10 a.m.
Come on, JR…think outside the box a little. We’re all Americans, even if we disagree.
outlander,
And what do you think about President Ronald Reagan’s appointee, Lee Thomas?
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/31/america/Gore-Environment.php
” “This is not only an environmental issue. It’s an issue of energy independence and it’s an issue of national security,” said Lee Thomas, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan. “We need to all come together on this and the time to move on it is now, not later.” “
“But it is increasingly clear that the more Clinton attacks Obama, the more she does the Republicans’ heavy lifting. Is she really willing to destroy the Democratic Party in order to save it from Obama?”
Senator Clinton has not attacked Obama.
It just happens that the media love affair for Obama has caused many damaging things about him to be very late coming to light. And what is the party worth as it becomes increasingly the Republican party, Democratic unit?
Hilary’s plan for offering government subsidized training for those who are layed off their jobs is just another example of how she wants to treat the symptoms, and not really address the underlying causes to why people are losing their jobs in the first place. It’s a bandaid solution to a growing crisis.
Obama’s ideas are targeted more to the issues causing the problems in the first place. We have to attack the problems at the core if we’re going to pull out of this economic mess the country’s in. We’re heading toward recession and I haven’t heard one common sense solution from her to turn things around.
Experience isn’t as important as the right thinking. Obama has the right vision…Hilary is just more of the same as we’ve had for the last 20 yrs.
It’s going to take a lot more than politics as usual to get out of this disaster Bush has put our country into.
For those of you that were too busy to click my link the other day:
The Disgrace of Liberalism
By J.R. Dunn
2008 marks the end of liberalism as a governing force in the same way that 1968 marked the end of liberalism as a political doctrine.
American liberals spent the ’60s seeing their programs and policies collapse one after the other. The War on Crime, the War on Poverty, civil rights legislation, Vietnam, all were either unmitigated disasters or textbook examples of the law of unintended consequences. The Democrats went into the 1968 presidential election as crippled as any political party in American history, choked with failure, bereft of ideas, and facing a general uprising from their own younger elements.
The Democrats’ 1968 Chicago convention marked the end of FDR-style liberalism. Media coverage revealed American liberals as incapable of controlling their own constituency, much less directing a country. As delegates cowered within the convention center, Movement rioters ran wild throughout the downtown area, fighting knock-down, drag-out battles with the police. Not a single liberal figure made any serious attempt to confront, control, or even communicate with the rioters. Little more than a decade after declaring itself the “American civic creed”, liberalism was on the ropes.
Instead of joining the Whigs and Know-Nothings in historical oblivion, liberalism surrendered to its internal rebels, the Democratic Party’s left wing, indistinguishable in beliefs and intent from any hardcore socialist party on the international scene. In 1972, they ran one of their own, George McGovern who in 1948 had served as delegate for communist front-man Henry Wallace) for the presidency.
McGovern’s defeat at the hands of Richard M. Nixon represented no real setback for the new ideology. American leftists commenced their “Long march through the institutions” using techniques developed by Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci to take over the media, academia, and much of the bureaucracy. Political liberalism, due in large part to its control over massive urban machines, many of then going back to the days of Tammany, continued as a kind of husk animated by the new leftist persona. But liberalism in the traditional sense existed only in the minds of the naive, the ill-informed, and terminally nostalgic.
Followers of the mutant ideology were in no way open with their agenda. Instead they operated under the cover of two pretenses — superior governance and high morality. Liberals presented themselves as technocrats with a clearer understanding of policy and governance than the opposition. Pragmatism was their creed, results their only criteria. Utilizing the old gimmicks of constituent services and favors and the new ones of planning and centralization, liberalism was able to maintain its dominance in backward and desperate areas of the country such as the Northeast and Upper Midwest.
The claim to higher morality was more inchoate, a kind of luminous abstraction beyond the grasp of money-grubbing Republicans, clearly understandable only by liberals themselves. Liberals claimed a monopoly on compassion, decency, and social justice (as defined by themselves), posing as the sole defenders of civic virtue against a horde of backwoodsmen, racists, and religious fanatics.
This elaborate double imposture served to keep liberalism alive for over three decades in the absence of ideas, doctrine, and serious accomplishments. But 2008 has brought the charade to an end. Events this year have exposed, once and for all, in a way that cannot be denied, elided, or spun, Democratic liberals as the party of abject incompetence and institutionalized corruption.
Eliot Spitzer worked his way to the governorship of New York State as the living embodiment of liberal higher morality, crusading against a series of dubious financial and corporate villains. His downfall as the result of a prostitution scheme too moronic for fiction might be taken as evidence of personal failings and no more were it not for the fact that his replacement, David A. Paterson, confessed to similar activities as the first official act of his administration. (If not even more egregious — no one, after all, has accused Spitzer of trading jobs for sexual favors).
We need only add James McGreevey, ousted in 2004 from New Jersey’s governorship for homosexual escapades with an aide (apppointed to a homeland security job with the state for which he had no qualifications), to conclude that liberalism has subsided to a level of corruption of European dimensions.
It’s often overlooked — thanks in large part to the Clinton “legacy” — that such misbehavior is almost always accompanied by corruption in other spheres. Insistence by Clinton’s defenders that his various lady troubles were “personal matters” succeeded in obscuring the moral connection between Big Bill’s follies and the endless bribes, kickbacks, suicides, illegal mass firings, and vanishing files that made the “most ethical administration in history” so entertaining to watch.
So it needs restating as a simple truth that a man who cannot control his sexual impulses is unlikely to succeed in more complex matters. In little over a year, Spitzer threw away the goodwill engendered by his landslide victory through a series of petty conspiracies and dirty tricks, bringing New York state government to a standstill in the process. While McGreevey was a better governor than he’s ever likely to get credit for (he solved the longstanding auto-insurance “crisis” that made New Jersey a laughingstock for half a dozen previous administrations), his penchant for putting his muscle boys on the state payroll undercuts any other claims for his record. The same can be said for Paterson. Though, being both blind and black, he may likely survive, revelations concerning his practice of awarding jobs and positions don’t bode well for the future.
These men are clearly representative of the post-Clinton Democratic Party. They set out to follow in Bill’s footsteps, have ended up much the same as he did, and have dragged their party and political doctrine along with them. (At this point somebody will bring up the names Foley and Craig. But neither stood anywhere near the center of American conservatism in the way that the Northeastern governors do with liberalism as a matter of course. Foley and Craig were rotten apples. With the Democrats, it’s the whole barrel.)
In turning to the presidential campaign, we need do no more than mention Madame Hillary. The Ma Barker of Little Rock is in a class by herself when it comes to political iniquity (not to mention dodging snipers). The chief puzzle concerning Hillary is how, being so blatantly what she is, she succeeds in holding onto any support whatsoever. There’s a process in quantum mechanics called “renormalization”, in which certain quantities with values of infinity are arbitrarily dropped back to a more manageable “zero” for the sake of solving the equation. This encapsulates Hillary’s political career: truly mindboggling levels of corruption and ineptitude have been continually renormalized by fellow politicians and the media to enable her to survive. These people made a particular type of bargain when they bent the rules for Hillary. Now the ground is opening up under their feet. It has been a pleasure to watch.
(The question I have about Hillary that’s least likely to be answered is this: what did she do to Daniel P. Moynihan? Recall the staged ceremony in which Moynihan handed the mantle of senator over to Hillary. Here was one of the greatest minds of recent American politics, possibly liberalism’s last political intellectual, a tower of strength, who for years answered the mad dogs of the UN General Assembly in the only tones they understood, standing beside Hillary, staring at the ground before him, face a mask of shame and self-disgust, and answering in monosyllables. What possible explanation can there be for this?)
Barack Obama was supposed to be another matter. Obama has ascended on a cloud of pure moral superiority and nothing else. That has now evaporated, thanks to impolitic comments from his wife and the news that he has for two decades belonged to what amounts to a racist cult. Obama has nothing else to offer in the way of experience or achievements. Beyond his current difficulties, there lie his continuing and as yet unexplained entanglement with Tony Rezko (He barely knew the man, he insists. All he did was show Rezko his new house before closing. I always clear major purchases with people I scarcely know, don’t you?), along with pending revelations concerning his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former terrorist who began his career as one of the driving forces of the Weather Underground.
Obama’s response, his “Kennedyesque” speech on race, was in fact purely Clintonian in that it attempted to transform his failings into virtues while placing the blame on the country as a whole. (Not to mention his innocent typical white grandmother.) In less than two weeks, Obama has succeeded in lowering himself to the same level as Madame Hillary. Quite an achievement.
(As for Obama’s claims to be a necessary “racial reconciliator”, this reconciliation has in fact been going on since the end of segregation, quite successfully too. As is often the case with liberals, Obama is offering a solution to a problem that is solving itself.)
To this gallery we can add Jennifer Granholm, who assured that Michigan’s current slide was as drastic and damaging as possible, Ed Rendell, Hillary’s consigliere for Pennsylvania, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Kwame Kilpatrick, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and malfeasance in office. That’s the Democratic Party, the bastion of American liberalism, as it stands. A party whose entire leadership cadre, including presidential candidates, state governors, and Congressional leaders, are corrupt or incompetent or both, a party more suitable to ruling a Balkan or Central African peapatch than the world’s reigning superpower.
2008 is being promoted as the year of the Democrats. Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to see this as anything but media hype. Weak as the Republicans may be, they do boast such figures as Schwarzenegger, Jindal, Crist, and Coburn among many others, not to mention a presidential candidate who, whatever his drawbacks, is a different order of being than the opposition.
But there have been danger signs. In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of “conservative” politicians who have adapted the liberal style, masking their own flaws with acceptable rhetoric. The latest of these is Mike Huckabee, who presented himself as a conservative messiah while governing Arkansas like… well, like a typical governor of Arkansas. Liberalism has demonstrated that these tactics lead nowhere. We must be careful not to succumb.
Liberalism will stagger on. It still has control of all those urban political machines, along with the unions and bureaucracies. But it has no future. Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far. We may yet live to see this albatross removed from the nation’s back.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.
Well there is who you want to work with there Mary.
You also call him neighbor.
We need to have more protective oversight from the lending business to the corporate outsourcing to protect American consumers and workers. The current mortgage crisis is just one example of how non regulation puts us at risk for predatory, fraudulant lending practices. Outsourcing jobs has been devastating to our economy…and there has been no effort by the current administration to discourage it. Things have to change…and from what I’ve read and heard so far, Hilary isn’t going to much about it either.
‘Clinton Slipping on Trust
Blunders About Past Weaken Credibility;
Move to Shift Focus’
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120700474140878503.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_topbox
“A Pew Research survey released last week shows 29% of Democratic voters describe Sen. Clinton as “phony,” compared with 14% for Sen. Obama.”
America is about diverse beliefs, opintions, and different ways of thinking. I don’t agree with Hank a lot of the time..and I consider him a friend and a neighbor. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where we all thought the same way..that would be too boring. Being challenged is a good way to explore your own belief system. It makes you think…and that’s never a bad thing.
For anyone that listens to Neil Bortz, he has some really good commentary on the Housing issue.
He used to be an attorney for closing mortgage deals.
You talk about predatory lending, what about predatory people on the lenders?
As usual though… the ATTITUDE that we need big daddy government to protect us from those evil companies prevails…
Nevermind that just a decade ago the lending companies were being racist for not lending money out. Now they are being predatory for lending money out.
“Liberalism will stagger on. It still has control of all those urban political machines, along with the unions and bureaucracies. But it has no future. Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far. We may yet live to see this albatross removed from the nation’s back.”
Hope not Hank, if that happens, we won’t be America anymore. Think about it.
““I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
Barack Obama
I guess those ideas have been pretty good to you huh Mary? Maybe why you want more of them?
“As usual though… the ATTITUDE that we need big daddy government to protect us from those evil companies prevails…”
You better be grateful for government protections, JR…without them we would be even more at the mercy of corporate greed.
I welcome any idea that encourages me to think, JR.
“If you want to live like a Republican, vote for a Democrat.”
Harry Truman
“If you already live like a Republican, vote for Barack Obama.”
J R
I don’t see the democrats as good and the republicans as bad…there is good and evil, mediocracy and inspiration, in each party. I think for myself, and I don’t discourage anyone from doing the same. That’s what makes Americans who we are.
So far, he has my vote..and I just live as I live.
I have to go to work…see ya all later!
J R,
Sounds to me like a very backwards “compliment”…
“You just said that I complimented the Republican ideas. That is not true,” Obama said to Hillary Clinton at Monday’s debate.
“What I said, and I will provide you with a quote, what I said was — is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to…”
I guess the ‘Smartest Woman in the World’ has always been a consumate liar!
March 31, 2008
Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior
As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.
The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.
Why?
“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.
Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.
The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.
“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.
The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?
“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.
The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.
Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.
But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.
the ATTITUDE that we need big daddy government to protect us from those evil companies prevails…
I agree! Everyone associated with Bear Sterns should give up everything they own and live on 12K a year until their their debt is paid off. After all, they made the wrong decisions in their lives so should be held accountable, right?
I remember that cosmos.
I ALSO remember how Senator Clinton helped Obama in that same debate to distance himself from yet another radical affiliation.
One HOPES if Obama should be the nominee that Senator Clinton will continue to help him with his political awkwardness.
The above was a column by Dan Calabreze,
http://www.northstarwriters.com/dc163.htm
QUICK! Pour more money into Public Edukation!
The system is failing, in spite of billions poured into it. Just a few billion more should improve it!
Keep pouring more money into the same failed system, that’s all we need to do.
Government programs are great!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,344190,00.html
High School Graduation Rates Plummet Below 50 Percent in Some U.S. Cities
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
WASHINGTON — Seventeen of the nation’s 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.
Gosh Hank, such a shocking story about Hillary.
She’s a liar? Really?
I’m surprised.
Hmmm,
Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, all bastions of the great ‘liberal experiment’.!
I wonder how long it’s been since a NEA member has been fired for cause in one of those great cities?
Well Max,
In the above I think she transgresses the title of ‘liar’. She’s a crook and a fraud. If her brief had been placed before a federal judge she could have been disbarred.
§ 448.101(4), Fla. Stat. (1997). We agree with WTVT that
the FCC’s policy against the intentional falsification of the news – which the FCC has
called its “news distortion policy” – does not qualify as the required “law, rule, or
regulation” under section 448.102.
The FCC has never published its news distortion policy as a regulation
with definitive elements and defenses
http://www.2dca.org/opinion/February%2014,%202003/2D01-529.pdf
there’s your fox news for ya, Max. And you wonder why no one believes it? Just because it’s on fox news doesn’t mean there’re any facts. Court of appeals ruled it’s just a suggestion.
J R,
‘News Sources Agree: Clinton Has Been Misrepresenting Obama’s Comments on Republicans’
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/01/21/news_sources_agree_clinton_has_1.php
‘Clintons Making Statements Not Supported by the Facts’
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/01/20/clintons_making_statements_not.php
Hank Price
Posted April 1, 2008 at 10:25 am | Permalink
Well Max,
In the above I think she transgresses the title of ‘liar’. She’s a crook and a fraud. If her brief had been placed before a federal judge she could have been disbarred.
=================================================
Doesn’t matter Hank. She’s a Democrat. Democrats will blindly vote for Democrats. In fact, they love politicians who cheat, lie, steal, break rules & laws, whatever it takes to get their Fair Share of Money out of the Federal Government.
Quid Pro Quo
Vote for us Democrats, and You Get Your Welfare Increased!
You want Free Stuff? Vote Democrat.
50% of the taxpayers pay 97% of the income tax. No reason to cater to those who pay taxes, when you can promise the moon to those who don’t pay taxes - at the expense of the other half of America.
A country divided? And we wonder why.
Hey, Regular: My posts were eventually included! I guess that server senility just hung ‘em up.
Hey, Ghoti: I may be going home to Hays to visit me folks and me adorable little steppuppy some time soon!
Do I need a Haz-Mat suit? Or a self-administered lobotomy? Or should I emulate Adam’s More-Man twit of a dance partner and trumpet my secondary virginity to the townsfolk who were so ready to have me burned at the stake 33 years ago?
Okay - I’m only kidding. I’ve changed. I’ve grown. I’ve manured, er, matured. The manure (my ex) moved away nearly 29 years ago. So the air should be non-fetid to take in………
Hank, you know the answer to your question.
Zero teachers have been fired in those cities, unless they are caught with their pants down or their skirt up.
What we need is even more money to be given to the same incompetent teachers, so that we can improve education.
The Wichita Wingnuts are finalists in the Best Minor League Logo — 1 of 2 here’s where to cast your vote
http://www.cnbc.com/id/23898413/site/14081545
May bring a few more tourist dollars (very few) here —
“Zero teachers have been fired in those cities, unless they are caught with their pants down or their skirt up.”
Whoa! They might go to jail, get suspended without pay. . .but fired?
No way!
Hank
Seems a well juried art show — I think the dog as painters art put (paw prints, mug shots on copiers could draw moe attention to the show — I’m sure the association has a sense of humor — I’ll write them.
Ken
Songbird, you can call me fish. Durned sight easier to type.
Have fun in Hays, and don’t get lost. Everytime I go there it seems they add a mile skirt around the place.
I know Mary has gone to work, but I want to thank her for reposting the editorial. I’ve been thinking about the same things Davis Merritt wrote about, and he pretty much covered it.
Hillary has gone the way of the Republicans, unable to stick to the issues and instead going for the b.s. Reminds me of Tanya Harding, going for the knees and reeks of fear. It’s totally uncalled for from a person as intelligent as Mrs. Clinton. (Sorry, JR, but for me, she’s showing her Republican roots.)
This ridiculous infighting Hillary is leading does nothing but give McCain a pass. It’s causing the Democrats to lose ground, as McCain bounces back and forth between the center right and the center. Is she paying attention, or is she so focused on beating Obama, no matter how down and dirty she has to get?
Do I agree she should step down? No. But she needs to go back to the issues. If she can’t win on those, she shouldn’t win.
Is she paying attention, or is she so focused on beating Obama, no matter how down and dirty she has to get?
=================================================
Yes. And she will win too.
S-U-P-E-R-D-E-L-E-G-A-T-E-S!!!
“The Liberal
Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.” “Like spoiled, angry
children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and
demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.”
Couldnt help but think of JR.
they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and
demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.”
And I thought of Bear Sterns…
YES! An all-controlling Government could have bankrupt Bear Sterns years ago!
Max,
I think you may be wrong about the superdelegates, but time will obviously tell.
Heckler,
This Liberal would gladly match you day for day as far as normal responsibilities.
Posted this on wrong thread.
This Jerry Ziefman? Note book review (apparently, he has a thing for liberal legal conspiracies):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/matthewdallek.htm
And here he is pimping his book about Ted Kennedy at NewsMax by whining about Ted Kennedy’s attempts to block conservative judicial nominees.
http://www.archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/1/30/124842.shtml
And here he is in his own website. Note his “dream” about a conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt.
http://www.jzeifman.com/
I think a fairly substantial grain of salt is called for with this guy. This guy has been pimping himself to the right wingnut media for awhile.
But, he’s perfect for people whose minds have already been made up, and who immediately believe anything that conforms to their own personal biases.
Well, one thing I see about the graduation rate story posted earlier is that, irrespective of any other factor, there are large African-American populations within those urban districts. This is a part of the problem, it seems to me; getting those folks, their families, et al, to buy into the importance of an education. Not happening there, it appears; and from my observations as an “outsider”, not happening here in 259, either.
Throwing more money at the problem won’t cure it, that’s for sure; taking money away will likely make it worse, IMHO. I don’t pretend to have an answer, either, but I’m not too sure firing teachers and administrators and replacing them with others would have any salubrious effect on the problem, the cause of which lies without the schools themselves, again IMO.
And by the way, there are precious few “facts” in J.R. Dunn’s screed. Just a lot of interpretation and spin that presume motivations (not to mention selective scandal picking).
Take Back America. Please.
By Rick Perlstein
March 31st, 2008 - 2:05am ET
From Newsday
An 80-year-old church deacon was removed from the Smith Haven Mall yesterday in a wheelchair and arrested by police for refusing to remove a T-shirt protesting the Iraq War.
Police said that Don Zirkel, of Bethpage, was disturbing shoppers at the Lake Grove mall with his T-shirt, which had what they described as “graphic anti-war images.” Zirkel, a deacon at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Wyandanch, said his shirt had the death tolls of American military personnel and Iraqis - 4,000 and 1 million - and the words “Dead” and “Enough.” The shirt also has three blotches resembling blood splatters.
Police said in a release last night that Zirkel was handing out anti-war pamphlets to mallgoers and that mall security told him to stop and turn his shirt inside out. Zirkel refused to turn his shirt inside out and wouldn’t leave, police said. Security placed him on “civilian arrest” and called police. When police arrived, Zirkel passively resisted attempts to bring him to a police car, the release said.
But Zirkel said he was sitting in the food court drinking coffee with his wife Marie, 77, and several others when police and mall security officers approached and demanded they remove their anti-war T-shirts.
The others complied, but Zirkel said he refused, and when he wouldn’t stand up to be removed and arrested, authorities brought over a wheelchair. “They forcibly picked me up and put me in the wheelchair,” said Zirkel, a deacon at one of the poorest Catholic parishes on Long Island, where a devastating fire recently destroyed the rectory and storage areas.
Regular
Posted April 1, 2008 at 2:09 am | Permalink
I’m never returning to the blog.
==================================
I guess only time will tell!!
NEW YORK — Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Steve Simon voiced opposition for tax increases on the oil and gas industry and said profits are needed to develop more energy resources. “We depend on high earnings over the up cycle to sustain investment over the long term, including the down cycles,” Simon said in his prepared remarks to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “Our world wide profits have grown, but taxes have grown even more,” he said. He said Exxon Mobil’s tax rate is about 44%, compared to 30% for other large U.S. corporations. Channeling $18 billion in tax breaks to oil companies over to renewable energy will discourage investment in fossil fuels, he said.
____________________________________________
This is a bad thing why?
Posting the largest profits in History and getting a tax break… hmmmm…..
I think Mr. Dirklel wanted attention more than he wanted to protest.
Some Deacon, not to comply with the wishes of his congregation.
Pride before all else, eh Dirkel?
Whoops, here is the link
_
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/energy/article/exxon-mobil-opposes-tax-increases-despite-high-profits_543620_11.html
_
Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds
By Jose Fermoso 03.28.08 | 5:30 PM
The Newton Virus rearranges the desktop icons on a Mac, and makes a great April Fools’ joke. (See Item 3 below)
Courtesy troika.uk
Here are the top 10 tech-related April Fools’ jokes to play on friends and co-workers. The best geek pranks make a gadget or a co-worker’s computer appear “broken.” Watch with glee as the unsuspecting victim goes mental trying to figure it out.
The list was compiled mostly from reader submissions to last year’s April Fools’ widget.
Remember, jokes are supposed to be funny, so don’t really break anything.
1. Re-map the Keyboard of Your Excitable Co-worker Every company has a sales rep who uses exclamation marks excessively (”C’mon guys!! We can do better this quarter!!!”). Use a program like KeyExtender, a registry hack that re-maps their keyboard so that exclamations and question marks are switched. They may begin to question their sunny outlook in life: “C’mon guys?? We can do better this quarter??? Guys??”
As they paw helplessly at their keyboards, sidle up and ‘fix’ their problem. Don’t forget to smile.
2. The Speech-to-Text Platform Joke You’ll need a wireless keyboard for this. Set up a meeting with a colleague to teach them a speech-recognition program (you’ll need a plausible reason why the company needs this). Then, right before the meeting, connect your keyboard wirelessly to the victim’s computer. Explain to the victim that the program will have to be trained to recognize their voice, and give them a sample sentence to try out. As they do this, have a co-worker a few desks away type gibberish into the program page (”Boomshakalaka!).
The poor guy will make a fool of himself talking louder and changing his pronunciation to try and make it work.
3. Desktop Havoc on the Mac A London design firm called Troika has produced video of an amazing computer “virus,” which may or may not be publicly available. It’s probably just a clever art project, but it’s too good not to mention here. Nonetheless, Troika’s Newton Virus is a Mac bug that rearranges the desktop icons using the accelerometers built into recent MacBooks. When the unsuspecting user picks up their laptop, all the icons and menu items fall to the ground as though under the influence of gravity. Watch it here:
This prank is perfect for control freaks who can’t stand to see even one icon moved on their desktop. They must be stopped!
4. Optical Mouse Confusion This is an update of the old mouse-ball-removal trick: A small piece of tape over the laser sensor on an optical mouse will cause it to go haywire. Just color the nonstick side of the tape with a Sharpie and then tape it over the lens.
A Wired.com reader last year reported that someone at a major tech company (it rhymes with ‘Frisco’) was fooled by this trick four times in a single day. Sometimes the simplest pranks are the most enjoyable.
5. Change the Language Settings on Google When a co-worker leaves her computer unattended for a minute, quickly go to Google’s home page and click on “Preferences.” There, you can choose the interface language of the search engine. Klingon, Hacker and Yiddish are all excellent choices, but Elmer Fudd is our personal favorite. As Elmer, you can use the Google Diwectowy, perform a Google Seawch or find out if you’re ‘feewing wucky.’
You’ll be amazed how few people realize you can do this. The change-the-language trick also works well on cellphones.
6. The BlueScreen of Death Screensaver The BlueScreen of Death error in Windows has driven lots of users to the fringe of computer homicide. Tap into the river of pain by installing the BlueScreen of Death Screensaver on a friend’s machine. It’s available at Microsoft’s IT website Technet, but there are several others out there. Just make sure it doesn’t have a real virus.
The Blue Screen of Death
What’s likely to happen? The victim will reboot his machine by hitting the restart button. Hopefully, they didn’t save their work!
7. Splitting Monitor Cables This is one even software geeks won’t easily figure out. Open up their monitor cable (don’t worry, it’s safe) and wire the RGB lines to different colors — this will totally warp the image on the screen. Everyone will assume it’s a software problem. You’re so clever. You can thank us later.
8. The Old Screenshot-as-Desktop-Wallpaper Gag This classic is as good as gold. Take a screenshot of your friend’s desktop and make it their desktop wallpaper. You’ll have to minimize applications, hide all of the desktop icons, and set the Windows task bar to auto hide. Pull up a comfortable chair and pretend to feel their pain while they click like mad and rail at the gods.
9. Change Autocorrect in MS Office People are too reliant on some common programs that help them cheat, such as the Autocorrect feature in MS Office. Capitalize on their laziness by adding a few of your favorite “alternative” spellings.
Common words like “about” or “together” work well. Even better, try subtly adjusting the spelling of your victim’s name. It’s so hard-wired into most people’s fingers, they hardly look at it. Right, Mr. Dumass?
10. Remotely Monitor a Friend’s Webcam Spy on your best buddy at work through his webcam (think American Pie), record the feed, then show a compilation of his brow-furrowing and nose-picking at the next staff meeting. This is why they like you.
You can do this through remote-monitoring programs, such as WebCam Monitor on Windows; and even do it through an iPhone using Telekinesis, an iPhone app that allows you to take pictures on a Mac laptop using its built-in iSight camera.
Grateful_Dave, thanks for the giggles. I’m thinking about implementing at least one of those….
AMY GOODMAN: Obama was speaking at the Cooper Union. I had a chance to briefly interview him as he was shaking people’s hands after he left the stage. I asked Obama why he’s not calling for a total withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in accordance with the 70 percent of Iraqis who say they want the US out.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Obama, quick question: 70 percent of Iraqis say they want the US to withdraw completely; why don’t you call for a total withdrawal?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I do, except for our embassy. I call for amnesty and protecting our civilian contractors there.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said a residual force—
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Yeah, but—
AMY GOODMAN: —which means [inaudible] thousands [inaudible].
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, no. I mean, I don’t think that you’ve read exactly what I’ve said. What I said is that we do need to have a strike force in the region. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Iraq; it could be in Kuwait or other places. But we do have to have some presence in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you call for a ban on the private military contractors like Blackwater?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I’ve actually—I’m the one who sponsored the bill that called for the investigation of Blackwater in [inaudible], so—
AMY GOODMAN: But would you support the Sanders one now?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Here’s the problem: we have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can’t draw down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops. So what I want to do is draw—I want them out in the same way that we make sure that we draw out our own combat troops. Alright? I mean, I—
AMY GOODMAN: Not a ban?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don’t want to replace those contractors with more US troops, because we don’t have them, alright? But this was a speech about the economy.
AMY GOODMAN: The war is costing $3 trillion, according to Stiglitz.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: That’s what—I know, which I made a speech about last week. Thank you.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/28/amy_goodman_questions_sen_obama_on
OMG, I’m so glad I’m self employed!
Clinton slams McCain on economy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080401/ts_nm/usa_politics_dc
This is what I think should be happening now in our primary, and I’m glad to see that it is. Both Obama and Clinton need to focus their attacks on McCain while they let the voters figure out which they want. If it keeps up like this, it will be very good for the Democratic Party.
Regular
Posted April 1, 2008 at 2:09 am | Permalink
I’m never returning to the blog.
==================================
Regular
Posted April 1, 2008 at 12:08 pm | Permalink
I think Mr. Dirklel wanted attention more than he wanted to protest.
Some Deacon, not to comply with the wishes of his congregation.
Pride before all else, eh Dirkel?
=====================================
I guess only time will tell!! LOL
‘Police said that Don Zirkel, of Bethpage, was disturbing shoppers at the Lake Grove mall with his T-shirt, which had what they described as “graphic anti-war images.”’
=============================
I think the man’s name was Zirkel… NOT Dirkel… :roll:
The first day of April and Chas is still without a clue. :D
And, to prove that even climate scientists have a sense of humor (from The Journal of Irreproducible Results):
Cyclopsychic research breakthrough proves hurricanes/global warming connection
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=922&tstamp=200804
But James, you’ve said it before, when it wasnt April Fool’s Day!! And you always come back! So, wonder who is the Fool???
Vaughn Tolle
Posted April 1, 2008 at 11:47 am | Permalink
This is a part of the problem, it seems to me; getting those folks, their families, et al, to buy into the importance of an education.
===================================================
And just why do people NOT buy into the importance of an education? Because they don’t need one to survive in America today.
A peer-reviewed expert on Global Warming:
http://gospelofreason.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/george-carlin-the-planet-is-fine/
George Carlin, “The Planet Is Fine”
And I quote without any kind of express permission
We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What?
And, unfortunately Max, there is the appeal of “more money” from “the league” (forgetting that for every LeBron James, there are 1000 Korleone Youngs), illicit activities such as dealing in street drugs, etc., etc., that intervenes even when a parent or the parents push for completion of at least high school. Then there is the problem of perceived bias due to racial makeup (note the use of “perceived”) in the job market, the feeling that they won’t get ahead even if high school is completed, ignoring the fact that many, regardless of race or ethnicity, don’t get very far ahead with only a high school diploma any more, and on and on.
There is some problem here, Max, and it isn’t solely linked to the limited ability to survive in America today without an education. As I said, I’ve not the answer, or else I’d written a book, and be sitting back collecting the royalties; but to the extent the problem is “cultural” (using the term loosely), it seems to me that it is without the ability of the schools by themselves to correct it.
Obama wants to keep a strike force close to Iraq.
Obama wants to give immunity to Blackwater.
Obama wants to keep Blackwater in Iraq.
_
Crickets
_
Sol — He explained the first and third ones… He never said the second one…
Did you miss something??
NOTE TO P-MAMA >>>
TOMORROW — CNN — ALL DAY — SPECIAL ON AUTISM — HOPE IT IS GOOD!! THEY ARE SHOWING A FEW EXCERPTS TODAY.
TOMORROW AT 11 A.M. CDT AND 8 P.M. CDT!!
No chas, I think you did. Read upthread. Where exactly did he explain them? He said what he said. Why does he have to explain it. It was straight forward.
WHY did he say he needed to keep Blackwater there, Sol??
WHERE does he say he wants immunity for Blackwater??
MANY have said there is a need to keep a strike force in the general area… but to pull out our troops…
I think his reasoning is sound… But I still didnt see where he wants “Immunity” for Blackwater??
Hey fish!
Did you read your link about the FOX News ruling? The incredibly idiotic point you tried to make was exactly opposite from the facts of the case!
nitwit
It is right here chas. I even bolded and ital’ed it for you…
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I do, except for our embassy. I call for amnesty and protecting our civilian contractors there.
actually, it wasn’t, hank, ya twit. read it again.
The award to the journalists was overturned because that fox station had no onus to report facts.
I guess in republican land a lie isn’t a lie as long as the courts say the regulation isn’t a law, right?
Amnesty, immunity…
Poh-tay-toh
Poh-tah-toh
Hmm, reading the case that Fish linked, it seems the case turned on a point of law, namely the ‘news distortion policy’ of the FCC not being a “law or adopted regulation”, as I recall the court’s discussion. Thus, the Florida Court of Appeals found that the plaintiff’s claim failed under what I refer to a rule 12(b)(6) test; the decision goes to neither the truth or falsity of the allegation, this was not discussed in the decision. From the court’s disposition of the case, it would not matter if, in fact, the management of the Fox subsidiary was promoting “falsehoods” in the news; rather, the case turned, as stated above, on the FCC policy on “news distortion” not being an adopted regulation, as required under the statute in question.
the old testament enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGrlWOhtj3g&feature=related
Max posted April 1, 2008 at 1:35 pm
“A peer-reviewed expert on Global Warming:”
And George Carlin’s “peers” are other comedians.
Well fish, tell me you’re really not that stupid are you?
The journalists were fired by the station because they refused to provide sources and proof for the story they were writing.
Fox fired them because they wouldn’t verify their story.
Read the whole link. The Fox News affiliate prevailed. They were on the side of accurate reporting.
Scientists at Newcastle University have created part-human, part-animal hybrid embryos for the first time in the UK, the BBC can reveal.
The embryos survived for up to three days and are part of medical research into a range of illnesses.
It comes a month before MPs are to debate the future of such research.
The Catholic Church describes it as “monstrous”. But medical bodies and patient groups say such research is vital for our understanding of disease.
They argue that the work could pave the way for new treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7323298.stm
This can’t be good.
Just think Sol, your children can marry a Hupanzee (chimpanzee/human) or a Lluman (Llama/human.)
Of course, there might be a conflict at the Thanksgiving dinner table when a relative Heagle (part human/eagle) is offended by the main course and the Hovine (part sheep/human) demands more greens on the table. :)
Hank, the Fox affiliate didn’t prevail on the basis of being on the side of accurate reporting. The Fox affiliate prevailed due to the holding that the FCC “news distortion policy” was not a statute or adopted regulation. The truth or falsity of the reporter’s story or the editorial decisions made by the affiliate management had nothing to do with the Court’s decision.
Fish, while you may feel that the jury award was overturned because “that fox station had no onus to report facts”, I note that the award that was reversed was on the one count of violation of the Florida private whistle blower statute that the jury determined had been violated. Just as I find no support for Hank’s reading of the case from the decision, I find no support for your position in the decision, either.
Vaughn,
A FCC policy not enforced is ho hum and a so what in this case. The outlaw reporters got axed.
The reporters were acting as activists and not reporters.
When they tried to file under the Florida’s Whistleblower’s act they got slammed to the mat, because the FCC never codified the very muddy regulation concerning ‘distortion policy.’
I mean, what person in their right mind would want to codify a regulation like that?
Talk about a straight arrow to the heart of the first amendment, that regulation would be shot down so fast it would set a record for speedy trials.
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php
I’m Ben Stein – many of you know me from the classic film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” or from my Comedy Central show “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. Still others of you may know me as a speechwriter, for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. You may even have read my books, attended one of my lectures at The American University, Washington DC, or seen me on the talk shows.
I’m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world’s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.
America is not America without freedom. In every turning point in our history, freedom has been the key goal we are seeking: the Mayflower coming here, the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War. Tens of millions came here from foreign oppression and made a life here. Why? For freedom. Human beings are supposed to live in a state of freedom. Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given.
A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.
Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no brain surgery, no Internet, no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways, no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.
This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.
Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.
Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.
Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.
In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed comes to theaters near you in February 2008. To learn more, check out my blog here often … and explore the rest of our site for new developments, or to volunteer to help spread the word.
Sincerely,
Ben Stein
——————
This documentary is going to do a lot to expose the irrational arrogance and fear in the Darwinist community. Such that they will stoop to ruining careers in order to keep it a true believers only club. Even on the site blog Stein is being shouted down.
Mark your calendars for April 18th and go see it.
I dare you.
HISTORY CHANNEL — 5 P.M. YODAY
“CULTS: DANGEROUS DEVOTION”
Regular, I don’t see it as simply as you regarding the “news distortion policy”. While we’re in agreement that the policy not enforced is a ho-hum situation, there is, it seems to me, a basis for such a policy to be placed in a regulation; not in its current form, to be sure, as it is “muddy”, to put it kindly.
As you know, outright defamation is an exception to the First Amendment. Yes, the New York Times v. Sullivan case and its progeny have instituted some tests that are hard to meet in this area, but if a knowingly false statement is deliberately publicized, even if a public figure is involved, as I read the current state of defamation law, the case may proceed. Thus, if a regulation of the FCC incorporates such a test as a “news distortion policy”, I believe it could survive scrutiny.
That being said, the jury was convinced that something wasn’t quite right, wasn’t it? :-)
Vaughn,
All things being equal, in this case, there were no fingers resting on the scales of justice.
Although, a breeze from the hallway made them jitter a bit before they settled into position.
:)
Regular, agreed. :-)
Sorry RD
Who is the Republican hero?
Reagan right? A good hearted simp that the cons reprogrammed.
I see the very same potential in Barack Obama.
And as to hecklers post. It has always struck me that Republicans are the three year old children who never grew up. They are perpetually stuck in the “mine!” phase of development.
Ah come on Sol, as long as the research is for alzheimers or parkinsons, or to cure global warming, it’s ok if a few Frankenstein monsters are made.
No problem.
And might as well create a market for selling aborted baby parts at the same time. Otherwise, these dead cells just get flushed.
Just think, abortions could be free, and Planned Parenthood could make a big profit too!
“Mark your calendars for April 18th and go see it.
I dare you.”
Sure outlander.
Just have God send me a ticket.
God knows JR can’t buy one for himself.
Sure, I’ll spring for it JR, if you’ll go.
But, I guess you asked for God to send it to you JR. Well, you never know how or through whom He might act.
Outlander, did you see any of Michael Moore’s movies??
Is Michael Moore still morbidly obese?
Are you, James??
J R posted April 1, 2008 at 3:59 pm
“Who is the Republican hero?
Reagan right? A good hearted simp that the cons reprogrammed.
I see the very same potential in Barack Obama.”
Uh huh… Obama, with a magna cum laude law degree from Harvard, and who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, is just a “simp”, like Reagan.
That sounds like an April Fools joke.
And J R, your comments re Obama’s economy speech?
Nope Chas, I have middle age spread, but hardly obese.
Was a point about Michael Moore - is that over eaters that are morbidly obese are passive aggressive.
In other words, he pretends to be a nice guy, meanwhile he has his knife to your back for his own appetites.
Ben Stein believes in Tax Increases on the very Rich >>>>
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/03/13/ben-stein-calls-for-tax-hikes-for-the-rich/
“Is Michael Moore still morbidly obese?”
A year or so ago, McCluer stated that he weighed more than my son, who is 6′3″ and 275#, and suggested that he could kick my son’s behind.
Now, McCluer now claims he weighs in at 240#, having lost forty pounds via an enema.
I bet he is lying.
Ahhhh yes… definitions for one dont fit those of another… Quite typical, I think… I believe the point is, it is irrelevant whether either Michael Moore, OR YOU, James are obese…
If the obesity claim that you make has anything close to factual grounding, then perhaps your middle age spread, is another man’s obesity!! ROFL!! :roll:
So, outlander, before James runs away with the thread, have you seen any of Michael Moore’s movies??
Actually, slightly less than 250 pounds now as I have been minding my diet.
Leave it to Clarkie to go for the personal attack when I talk about something he doesn’t agree with.
Clark just can’t leave personal stuff out of the blog.
Guess it’s one of his short comings.
(chortles)
Not me Chas, I’ve read the reviews and the analysis which point out the dozens of false claims Moore makes in his movie.
Like the opportunity that Moore didn’t take to interview 50 Cubans who had proof that they were denied any health care in Castro’s clinic, because they weren’t loyal Communists.
James, thats amazing… I addressed a question twice to outlander, and YOU responded!! Amazing!! You outlander’s private secretary now??
I asked a question and you avoided it Chas.
Are you Moore’s apologist now?
But wait — maybe James is outlander, and merely forgot to change nics before responding!! ROFL They do both type a lot alike, and when one is around, the other is always around too!! ROFL!!! Toooo funny!!!
And Chas still avoids the answer as usual.
But James, I answered your question WITH a question… Because Moore’s and YOUR obesity - or lack thereof - are irrelevant to whether another poster has SEEN the Michael Moore’s movies!!
Soooooooo as I said, OUTLANDER…. before James hogs the entire thread, have YOU seen any of Michael Moore’s movies??
And I already answered about Michael Moore’s movie.
Michael Moore is morbidly obese and he will die from simply eating himself to death.
So, aqre you dmitting to being Outlander??? Or just jumping in on a question that didnt involve you??
Okay ::/Chas/Das/Sugar,
Since you want to play games…let’s rock.
How’s that 2.5 million earnings doing you had last quarter?
Still deny there being a Luby’s in San Angelo?
BTW, James, are you the Blog’s resident expert on Michael Moore’s diet, too??
“Clark just can’t leave personal stuff out of the blog.”
You mean like calling someone a “Heebie” or accusing them of being gay (for supporting gay rights) or making inappropriate comments about someone’s granddaughter?
Personal stuff like that?
Still think that you can kick my boy’s ass, McCluer?<